Pointing A Finger At Network Management Point Products By Bruce Boardman   Sometimes it seems management is an afterthought when it comes to network hardware. After all, the management solution from the hardware manufacturer should let the two work together seamlessly, right? We decided to test these point products at our Syracuse University lab to determine if a vendor's proprietary management application suite helps to manage its networking hardware. It came as no surprise that 3Com Corp.'s Transcend Enterprise Manager is the best solution for managing an all-3Com network. Likewise, O ptivity Enterprise is the best for Bay Networks-based environments, Cisco Works is ideal for Cisco Systems and SPECTRUM Element Manager is best-suited for the management of Cabletron Systems equipment. However, the maturity, consistency and functionality of these products differed greatly. To view the Report card. 3Com Transcend Enterprise Manager is the most mature and best integrated of the products we tested. Cisco Works, comprised of VLAN Director, Cisco View and Traffic Director, is deliberately limited in terms of scope, but it is rock-solid all around. Bay's Optivity Enterprise is full-featured and offers good applications, but has spotty coverage over its admittedly eclectic hardware collection. SPECTRUM Element Manager, Cabletron's completely rewritten Windows element manager--not to be confused with the network management platform S PECTRUM--turned in a solid performance, but it doesn't integrate VLAN management, and doesn't provide any switched global views of the network. Breaking It Down Each application suite breaks down network management into roughly four functional areas. The first is the integration of the suite within an overall framework, which includes support for different device types across the same vendor's product lines. Capabilities in this area highlighted the maturity of some of the products. The next functional area is the device or element (hub, switch or probe) configuration and management solution. This area is typically identified by the bitmap image of the device--displayed with blinking LEDs and color-coded twisted-pair jacks. The third functional area is the global tools that manage multiple devices and the connectivity between them, like topology mappings. The last functional area is traffic monitoring. We considered traffic monitoring and its integration into these management point products an important feature. Although virtual LAN (VLAN) and Remote Monitoring (RMON) management are important aspects of network management, we chose not to focus too heavily on these features in this comparison. We did, however, call on both of these management functions, where appropriate, to determine just how well they are integrated into each product. Where n ecessary, Hewlett-Packard Co.'s HP OpenView was used as our network management framework. 3Com Corp. Transcend Enterprise Manager Coherent global applications characterize Transcend Enterprise Manager. Status View and Inventory manager, applications within Transcend, provide wide, flexible access to multiple devices. Although not perfect, Transcend is well-integrated and able to access management information across a variety of 3Com switch and hub models. Transcend requires that you have the right switches paired with th e right applications to make the management functions work. For example, we were able to define VLANs only after we loaded a new version of the software that included the VLAN manager as part of the Unix management application. But, overall, Transcend had by far the fewest inconsistencies that could be attributed to different hardware requiring different management software. To download an Adobe Acrobat .pdf format version of the Network Management Point Products feature charts, click here.

Updated May 12, 1997